Ever since the story of the Jena 6 hit the national spotlight, America has had to deal with the significance of racist symbols, particularly that of the noose. Since that time, we have seen story after story about nooses popping up in workplaces in apparent attempts to intimidate black people.

In the previous incarnation of this site, I posted many stories referencing articles about nooses turning up in workplaces. For the most part, because the stories involved working-class people, they didn’t gain much traction in the mainstream press. But, as I said previously, the happenings in Jena, Louisiana changed all that.

Now, in another part of Louisiana — New Orleans, to be exact — a supervisor has been suspended and the FBI has been called in to investigate yet another noose incident at a sewage station of the that city’s department of public works.

This came to light after an employee there, Terrence Lee, blew the whistle after his superiors did nothing about the racist symbols on display in the office of Lee’s supervisor, Bill Hartline. After being ignored, Lee went public with photos he took of the inside of his boss’s office. These photos show that, inside his office, Hartline had hung two nooses. Also, Hartline proudly displayed a bullwhip he owned, with the word’s “Bill’s Whipping Post” and, worse yet, a dartboard with a black man standing in the center and his groin as the bull’s eye.

This case has been referred to the department of Justice’s civil right division, which, sadly, is now no friend of black folks (please reference my previous posts about how Bush has gutted the civil right division). Therefore, I don’t expect too much to happen in this case…if we don’t say something.

Therefore, we need to raise enough hell that incidents like this can’t be ignored. Some say the noose is back. I say it never left but, we need to make it do so.

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